Is your business struggling with its adolescence?

Much like an adolescent teenager, the adolescent company struggles for emancipation from its parent-founder, according to Ichak Adizes in his book ‘The Pursuit of Prime’. The stakes are high during this wrenching rite of passage: nothing less than rebirth as an adult. Brave, teary-eyed, scornful, scared, the teenager zigzags into a new sense of self. Although we can accept the teenage years as a normal transition from dependence to self-reliance, we need to remember nothing grows without a struggle.

As long as the company does well, expanding revenues and market share, the board regards the founder or COO as a genius with a golden touch. When, however, profits decline and uncontrolled activity brings about a succession of managerial disasters, the board starts to view the same leader as an unguided missile.

What is going on? How did the company survive the stages of Infancy and Go-Go only to arrive at Adolescence once again to do battle?

The answer lies in understanding the dynamics of systems development. Leaders of adolescent organisations want law and order, predictability, acceptance and ‘ownership’ of decisions. They want a constitution, but one they can stand above – free to break the rules by which others must abide – and this won’t continue to work.

So how to address this in terms of the 6 aspects of management? Read more of this post